(This is a long post, but I ask that you read everything before replying. If this is the wrong place for this kind of post, I'm sorry.)

はじめまして。ヒーロユイと申します。よろしくお願いいたします。このちっぽけなわたくしの下手な日本語が皆様に通じるのでしょうか。

NHK日本語発音アクセント辞典に表示された標準語の単語の高低（ピッチ）アクセントが無料のdictionary.goo.ne.jpにも表示されていますけれども、時と場合によってそのピッチの上がり目と下がり目が変わります。ニュースアナウンサーになりたければ日本人がピッチ変化ルールを勉強しなければなりませんので、ネットのどこかに書いてあるはずです。無料のレッソンがあるかもしれませんが、わたくしの今の日本語能力でみつけられません。はじめから標準語の正しいアクセントを勉強したかったのに「ピッチアクセントは構わないで」とネットに言われてしまいました。最初から発音が日本人の発音らしくできました。難しかったが、何とか正しい発音を癖にできました。感情を込めて言うとき以外、強弱アクセントはどこにもありません。声だけを聞くと、わたくしは日本人ではないことをばらさないようになりたいです。日本のテレビ番組に出たら字幕がいらないように話したいです。「そんな必要はない」とか「日本人だって字幕が要るときが多い」とか思う方がいらっしゃるかもしれませんが、教材さえあれば、この下らないわたくしには何でも独学で勉強できます。わたくしにとって、至上能力を目指さなければ徹底的に最後まで頑張らない可能性が高いのです。ですからTJPで標準語ピッチアクセント知識をあつめましょう。皆様に必要ではありませんが、一生懸命アクセントを正そうとする方々のためです。Japanese people speak with many accents. Toukyou-ben is a common dialect, but for the purpose of this page, let’s limit this discussion to the most widely understood and accepted hyoujungo, even though it isn’t often used in relaxed settings (even in Toukyou).Listening to a lot of native speakers of a particular accent is a viable way to pick up their accent. I can sort of mimic the rises and falls of natural speech, but it is the result of merely guessing where the pitch rises and falls are, and trying to implement certain melody patterns into the sentences (e.g. －んじゃないよ pattern often has a high mora beforeんand another on な). Once I learned that all nouns have accents in predefined positions, the positions of accents in verbs and adjectives change depending on the particular conjugation, and the speed of the utterance changes how those accents are realized, I saw how far I am from sounding like I’ve picked up a Japanese accent.

An argument can be made against trying to construct notation that attempts to capture the subtleties of something as fluid and complicated as a spoken language. It could easily get too complicated, and may hamper accent realization rather than helping it. Even so, if we can transcribe a phrase using some notation, and provide a link to a sound file where native male and female speakers say it with different speeds, emotions, prominences and intonations, the notation can be brought to life. This project would have to be comprehensive and exhaustive, but I am willing to contribute however I can. No one has done this before, so this is a chance to make TJP the most comprehensive site for those willing to learn the rarely mastered accent.

If I had access to all the rules governing the accent, I would practice using them everyday until I internalized them. I understand that there is flexibility in where the accent is in certain words and how the rules are not always strictly determined. In those situations, the acceptable range of variation can be shown.

The first thing we should do is bring all the information about the accent together on this thread (without actually plagiarizing) so we can find a way to represent it. Then someone should write a lesson including all of it and place it on the Lessons Page where it can easily be found. The usual introduction to pitch accent should be presented to newcomers (e.g. Learning correct pitches isn’t that important for communication because context will make the meanings clear, pitch accent is different from the stress accent in English, the more important thing is correct pronunciation, etc).

http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp shows the accent position of individual words.日本語アクセントの概要 shows how prominences work and has a great pitch representation that we may be able to adapt.This provides a rule for treating accented, unvoiced vowels.Wikipedia’s アクセントpage talks about how prominences and pauses can be inserted into phrases so they become easier for the listener to understand, but I don’t fully understand how that’s done.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent describes how pitches rise and fall smoothly during phrases, instead of remaining unnaturally flat.A response here shows the rule for compounding nouns.Here is a page that includes some verb and adjective conjugation rules.

Does anyone know of any other rules missing from these pages?

(Edited for ease of reading. I'm sorry for being annoying and causing you all trouble. I sincerely thank you all for bearing with me.)

Last edited by Hiiro Yui on Mon 09.08.2008 5:47 pm, edited 2 times in total.

The rule of writing posts in a manner conducive to being read easily instead of gratuitously tossing in lots of kanji here and there to muddy the waters? Not sure if that's a rule, but if it isn't it should be. We're all properly impressed that you 知る so manｙ 漢字 but it makes your post 読みづらい for the 初心者s.

I had a boss who spoke like this CONSTANTLY. He generally got chewed out by the upper management because he would write his reports like that as well, as well as to clients(?!). "choose a language and write in it" was the general consensus.

Also just a hint, but be careful to check the nuance of a word in the dictionary. 傍題 means the subtitle rather than the main title of a book etc. and is rarely used. The word you wanted is 字幕 which means subtitles on movies or television.

...if we can transcribe a phrase using some notation, and provide a link to a sound file where native male and female speakers say it with different speeds, emotions, prominences and intonations, the notation can be brought to life. This project would have to be comprehensive and exhaustive, but I am willing to contribute however I can. No one has done this before, so this is a chance to make TJP the most comprehensive site for those willing to learn the rarely mastered accent.

I'm not sure how deep you/we would want to get into this, but if you are interested in gathering example sentences (maybe with feedback with native speakers) I can record Yumi. She is the only voice I have access to, but she could record a sentence with different contexts in mind. I'm sure it would be better if several native speakers contributed recordings, but they would have to record it themselves or fly to Florida

Substituting Japanese vocabulary into English sentences, complete with things like -ing, -s, -ed, really is a great way to internalize vocabulary and reduce the need to translate J-E or E-J in your head during Japanese conversation. In effect the words just become new synonyms and your brain will treat them like newly acquired English words, or so I think.

The problem is that done out loud or in posts, it is highly annoying to others.